The present invention relates to a document, particularly of the check type, with forgery-prevention means.
As is known, a problem which is currently strongly felt in various fields, and especially in the case of checks, is the one related to the possibility of preventing the forgery and counterfeiting of the document.
The term "counterfeiting" is used herein to describe the possibility of performing a fraudulent reproduction or imitation of the document, whereas the term "forgery" is used herein to describe the possibility of altering parts of said document and, especially in the case of checks, the spaces where the digits are indicated, where the signature is placed, and so forth.
The code known as CMC7 is currently used for checks drawn on current accounts; in practice, said code prints on the check a magnetic bar code, capable of also writing in unencoded form the reference number, which can be read by a magnetic reading head for the encoding of the number of the check.
Said code is currently used as an element which allows to automatically detect the means of reference of the check, and can act as a counterfeiting-prevention element, since its absence indicates an unlawful reproduction or imitation of the check, but it is unable to constitute a forgery-prevention means, i.e. it cannot in any way point out the occurrence of the forgery of the amounts or other items written on the check.
On the other hand, all the means currently used to act as forgery-prevention element, such as for example the use of erasable inks in the region where the numbers related to the amount are applied, have not always proved themselves capable of making immediately evident the forgery of the amounts or other data, and most of all the detection of such forgery could be performed only visually and not automatically, so that the forger had the possibility of "reconstructing" the region where he had modified the amounts or data, thus making the forgery difficult to detect.